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Diary

John Torode

Wednesday, 22nd August 2007

‘I’m not Jewish, but I love Israel, and I try to holiday there every year.’ An uncontentious remark, surely, but it produces Batemanesque horror around the scrubbed-pine dining tables of London’s chattering classes.

Arad, Israel
‘I’m not Jewish, but I love Israel, and I try to holiday there every year.’ An uncontentious remark, surely, but it produces Batemanesque horror around the scrubbed-pine dining tables of London’s chattering classes. You are more likely to boycott ‘apartheid Israel’ than visit it for pleasure — unless you are Jewish, Islamophobic or Paul Johnson. Since I returned from last year’s trip, which coincided with Israel’s justified — but mishandled, unsuccessful and deeply demoralising — war against Hizbollah, my affection for the place has cost me dear. Endless rows. The end of a long friendship with a respected British historian. A personal, televised attack by the Blessed Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

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